The ASCII Group's Dedicated Forum "Rooms" Let MSPs Talk about Vendors

The ASCII Group is now assisting members with conversations around vendor-related questions on its online discussion forum by opening up dedicated rooms. Here are the details.

The ASCII Group COO and Senior VP Doug Young says the new rooms allow conversations between members to be more efficient.

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The ASCII Group has created new "rooms" for its web-based community that are dedicated to vendor-specific questions and discussions.

The membership-based community of independent managed services providers (MSPs), value-added resellers (VARs) and solution providers on Wednesday announced the addition of several new vendor-dedicated rooms to ASCII-Link, the organization's Web-based forum.

The ASCII Group COO and Senior Vice President Doug Young told MSPmentor that these rooms are not sponsored by the vendors themselves because members prefer it that way.

"Vendors are not given access to ASCII-Link because our solution providers want a venue where they can give honest opinions without being concerned that vendors are monitoring their comments," he said.

He added: "That being said, when situations arise where we feel that contacting a vendor for input is appropriate and will help solve an issue, we will do so with the permission of the solution provider."

Young said the "conversation flow can be more efficient" by members leveraging these new rooms.

"Members have always had the ability to post these questions in the main ASCII-Link room, the challenge was that the initial question in the main room would sometimes veer in a direction that was non-germane to the original question," he said.

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